Testing potential selective agents acting on leaf shape inIpomoea hederacea: predictions based on an adaptive leaf shape cline

Testing potential selective agents acting on leaf shape in Ipomoea hederacea: predictions based on an adaptive leaf shape cline

Leaf shape is a highly variable phenotype, and is likely influenced by many sources of selection. Ipomoea hederacea exhibits an adaptive latitudinal cline in leaf shape, which is controlled by a single Mendelian locus: lobed individuals dominate the north with entire-shaped individuals mostly in the south. We test if the following candidate selective agents, suggested by the literature, are res...

Natural selection maintains a single-locus leaf shape cline in Ivyleaf morning glory, Ipomoea hederacea.

Clines in phenotypic traits with an underlying genetic basis potentially implicate natural selection. However, neutral evolutionary processes such as random colonization, spatially restricted gene flow, and genetic drift could also result in similar spatial patterns, especially for single-locus traits because of their susceptibility to stochastic events. One way to distinguish between adaptive ...

Natural selection on a leaf-shape polymorphism in the ivyleaf morning glory (Ipomoea hederacea).

Leaf shape is one of the most variable plant traits. Previous work has provided much indirect evidence that leaf-shape variation is adaptive and that leaf shape influences thermoregulation, water balance, and resistance to natural enemies. Nevertheless, there is little direct evidence that leaf shape actually affects plant fitness. In this study, we first demonstrate that populations of the ivy...

Modelling Leaf Shape Evolution

Background and Motivation. The foundations of evolution and population genetics respectively can be found in studies at the level of the organism. Such models will virtually always focus on intrinsically discrete features/characters such as nucleotides or the absence-presence of a character capturing a continuous feature. However, this precludes a large class of characters that are of major int...

Fractal perspectives of GIScience based on the leaf shape analysis